PP parties with rogues she’s supposed to be investigating

9 February 2020

Yesterday the media reported that the current Public Protector (PP), Busisiwe Mkhwebane, has had a birthday bash celebrating her 50th birthday. While this in itself is of no general interest, some of the guests who attended the party most certainly are.

Her number one fan, Dali Mpofu was there, along with the dubious Bongani Bongo. Bongo spent a large part of his tenure in the fifth Parliament trying to outdo his ANC colleagues on the Justice Portfolio Committee in seeing who could treat the previous PP with the most discourteous contempt. He then eagerly competed for the post of Praise Singer in Chief of the current PP, particularly during his whirlwind stint as Minister of State Security, during which, rumour has it, he spent more time in her office than in his own.

If these reports are accurate, also in attendance was Mosebenzi Zwane, he of Estina Dairy Project infamy.

Zwane's huge and unmistakeable role in the criminal enterprise that was Estina was conspicuously absent in the first and very questionable report of this PP, later emerging via a whistleblower's report to the Speaker of Parliament, that this PP, now so cosily socializing with Zwane, instructed the investigator to remove evidence implicating Zwane and Ace Magashule.

In August last year, the PP announced that her office had undertaken a new investigation into Estina, where politicians would be held to account. This investigation, the results of which have yet to be shared, must of necessity include the machinations of Zwane.

Yet he reportedly shamelessly cavorts at the birthday celebrations of the person who is investigating him.

The staggering impropriety thereof aside, this PP, despite a cacophony of views to the contrary, insists that she has both read the Constitution and understands her mandate, and is fit and proper to hold office.

If she is unable to appreciate this rather glaring conflict, and the underlying erosion of independence that accompanies it, then we beg to differ.

Issued by Natasha Mazzone, Chief Whip of the Official Opposition, 9 February 2020